Sunday, November 14, 2010

Rae Armantrout - Veil

A few Rae Armantrout suggestions, from VEIL – New and Selected Poems (2001):

NATIVE

How many constants should there be?

The slick wall of teeth?

The white stucco
at the corner,

flag on its perch
loosely snapping?

*

“Get to the point!”

as if before dark—

as if to some bench
near a four-way stop.

*

At what point does
dead reckoning’s

net
replace the nest

and the body
of a parent?

*

The apparent
present.

Here eucalyptus
leaves dandle,
redundant but syncopated.

THE PLOT

The secret is
you can’t get to sleep
with a quiet mind;
you need to follow a sentence,
inward or downward,
as it becomes circuitous,
path-like, with tenuously credible
foliage on either side of it—
but you’re still not sleeping.
You’re conscious of the metaphoric
contraption; it’s too jerky,
too equivocal to suspend you

And Nature was the girl who could spin
babies out of dustballs
until that little man
who said he had a name showed up
and wanted them
or wanted to be one
or a cast of cartoon
characters assigned to manage
the Garden
so even Adam and Eve discovered
they somehow knew the punchline:
the snake would swallow
the red bomb

Why is sleep’s border guarded?
On the monitors
professional false selves
make self-disparaging remarks.
There’s a sexy bored housewife,
very Natalie Wood-like,
sighing, “Men should win”—
but the only thing that matters
is the pace of substitution.
You feel like trying to escape
from her straight-arrow husband
and her biker boyfriend

You can’t believe
you’re on Penelope’s Secret.
A suitor waits
for ages
to be hypnotized
on stage.

OUR NATURE

The very flatness
of portraits
makes for nostalgia
in the connoisseur.

I do know. It's just that, in order for the unconventionality to hold up, we must allow it to work its course. That is, we need to be open to being unconventional readers that provide points of reception for unconventional authorship. But I do know (or at least I think I know) the identities of each member of the Rejection Group, save that of the new Hollywood member (which I'm sure to learn soon).

As for Language poets playing with authorship . . . seems like a long shot to me, though not outside the realm of possibility. I'm not sure most LANG / conceptual poets have thought through issues of authorship in such a way that they would know what to do outside the straight 'I am that I am' approach to writing & publishing.

"I'm not sure most LANG / conceptual poets have thought through issues of authorship in such a way that they would know what to do outside the straight 'I am that I am' approach to writing & publishing."

But it seems such a narrow alley. I mean, it's not very difficult to think through those issues. it seems such an odd box to be in. Silliman did have that book he co-authored with Armantrout, though one can do that without going very far from 'I AM THAT I AM.'

I'm still waiting for some anon group to ask me to join. I'd love to be The Hollywood Poet. Or even Poet X.

I see Hollywood; you see Holland. You see Silliman; I see someone else. But if our respective readings of the Rejection Group's note on their new member is any indication, perhaps there's something to your thesis re. Silliman.

But it seems such a narrow alley. I mean, it's not very difficult to think through those issues. it seems such an odd box to be in. Silliman did have that book he co-authored with Armantrout, though one can do that without going very far from 'I AM THAT I AM.'

John -- really? if it's not very difficult, why do so few poets do it?

Stay tuned. More from the Rejection Group coming soon in SLP (though not necessarily in the forthcoming issue which will be out in the next few weeks). I do, however, have some wonderful pieces here . . .

Give us a break, please. Kenny Goldsmith was already fizzling in 1964.

And this Conceptual Poetry gag, in general: See the essay by someone named Vanessa Place (with "Evil" in the title) for a good chuckle. It's in the latest issue of a journal called Lana Turner. You can buy it at Borders.

Make one. Then disguise it.Make them all tryto figure it out.Be witty and cleverand erudite.Make sure they gettoo frustratedin the searchingto really get it.

Many references, too.Some obscure, so they appearto reflect a cultured mind.Be scholarly and evermore unclear.Offer a gift but hide it,something they will never find.Tie it much too tightto unwrap. Lock it,without a key,behind a door.

To the sad word-boundthis will be a joy…another literary puzzleto struggle with and pass emptytime, but to the rest of ussuch a bore.

That complaint is only applicable if you're correct in that there is something there that is then taken away or hidden. What if, on the other hand, it's not about hiding points, but investigating points? Does the point have to be found and then made into a term paper?

People at one time thought WIlliam Carlos Williams facile and light. Now he's quite admired for those same spaces. They were vapid, now they're resonant. As much rests with the reader as with the author. The performance is multiple.

What if one is called to relax a bit? To follow the suggestiveness of the language, just as one follows the suggestiveness of a landscape?

That is part of the "difficulty" in poets like Ashbery and Armantrout. There are always going to be people who look at the suggestive bits or the lack of overt transitions between "points" as a call to allow anything.

There is a difference between a poem that allows a degree of play between reader and poem and a poem that is a blank page. A gamut of allowable readings is different than anything goes. So, no, I'm not saying these poems are cloud shapes.

"How many constants should there be?"

Indeed. In teeth or housing, I'd say it's more inportant in teeth, though some would have it be housing. It's all about priorities.

Hey, I did say I wished I were part of a collective, so I guess that's fitting. Yikes, though.

So, Waldrop, huh? I don't know. Why do you ask? The Waldrops come from a different place, as aesthetic strands go, than Ashbery and Armantrout, who probably come from differing strands as well. Truth is, I'm not sure how to compare them. They all write poems. I like them. Other than that, the spoon idea has merit. Maybe a shiny spoon, convex side, in honor of Ashery's Self Portrait.

My comment was not directed towards you. I have never found you to be ungracious or even mean, let alone arrogant. I was referring to an earlier comment that I took as intended to be offensive (or at least insulting). Then I realized how ridiculous it is to be concerned about a remark from someone who is, OBVIOUSLY, ashamed of their own name.

At any rate, I was simply trying to develop a debate about ‘elliptical’ poetry based on your original Armantrout post. I see Waldrop, Armantrout and (as you know) Ashbery as ‘elliptical’ and therefore, ultimately, pointless. I was hoping someone would take the bait. I never even actually got to the POINT of my argument. Oh, well.

Jeez…where the hell are Bill Knott and Franz Wright when you need them?

I'll take the bait. It's disconcerting to see you post your poems as counterpoints to other poets and their aesthetic. This seems to imply that it's a matter of choice. In the case of Ashbery, he has said numerous times that he doesn't have any forumla for how he writes other than using the poem as a launching pad for free associations. The experience of reading an Ashbery poem, rather than arriving at neatly packaged, sentimental lessons, usually reflects the arc of though as it rifts, peaks, and recedes.

Regarding Armantrout, I'm too inexperienced to make any serious claim for her poetry other than it challenges the reader to look at a text in new ways, which invariably leads to new interpretations.

By pointless, do you mean that elliptical poetry resists easy paraphrase? If so, then I agree.

1. You know that times must be tough when someone wishes Franz Wright were commenting. Yikes.

2. This needs a bigger space than a comment stream back and forth, this “elliptical” question. But there really needs to be some sort of large venue discussion. I wish POETRY magazine or APR or someone would have a symposium on this topic. Specifically: different poetry requires different ways to reading.

The closest analogy I can think of is in painting. When the abstract revolution hit, and then the Pop Art revolution hit, each (and others as well, but these will stand) caused a renegotiation between viewer and painting. In poetry, the revolutions came without such a renegotiation. In paintings, there was a way to read paintings as narrative, but reading Motherwell in that way would make the paintings seem fairly pointless. The same with poetry. Reading Ashbery in the way one might read E.A. Robinson doesn’t yield much.

I think it’s because there are so few strong critics who write for a general audience about a wide gamut of poetry. Bloom and Vendler and Perloff were big, and currently we have Burt, who’s trying for that same large field, but it pales in comparison to the many critics and collectors and glossy magazines and galleries that are talking and encountering the visual arts.

So sure, elliptical poetry (if that’s the term one chooses) is pointless, if one reads it as if it were not elliptical poetry. So one expects something different from a poem by Mary Oliver than one expects from a poem by Rae Armantrout. If that isn’t something one feels like doing, then one can stay with Mary Oliver (or Rae Armantrout).

My own contention is that, to me, Mary Oliver’s poetry is usually pointless, because whatever I have to encounter in her poetry I feel I’ve already encountered so many times (both in content and form) as to make the encounter ephemeral.

>My own contention is that, to me, Mary Oliver’s poetry is usually pointless, because whatever I have to encounter in her poetry I feel I’ve already encountered so many times (both in content and form) as to make the encounter ephemeral.<

I agree on Oliver's "content." But think we have to be more careful about "forms" we've "encountered so many times." There is nothing in more "transparent" rhetorical modes to be rejected ipso facto--for plainness, directness, spokenness, whatever: First name that pops to mind is Cavafy (granted, I read him in translation, but we know he's direct and limpid in the Greek, too, hardly a verbal "abstractionist," though indeed a complex prosodist). He's accessible, and you wouldn't want him any other way.

You know who's a beautiful poet? Rexroth as "translator"/rewriter of the Chinese... Now there's some plain style for you. On a desert island, I'll take his two Chinese books any day over anything post-avant-"elliptical" you got (tired word, elliptical)...

Well, plenty more in that regard, obviously! But you see what I mean, John?

Indeed! This is why I was saying I wish there's be a symposium, something where people are in dialogue. I didn't mean form as in formal poetry, I was thinking more of her rhetorical strategies. Strategies that exist in a similar way as the content to telegraph the massaged, to my ears, overused point, in counterpoint to Fuzz's description of Ashbery's rhetorical project.

It's far from the plain, more conversational, style, which I'm quite fond of. Though that can be slack. Actually it's important to stress that any mode of artistic production can be (in the abstract) handled well or poorly by the artist. In defending Ashbery or Armantrout or Waldrop or Ronk, I'm not defending everyone who might get the "elliptical" (I agree that it's a tired label) label.

But you know. The fact is that there's been a whole generation of poets now more or less brought up to assume anything not quasi-Langpo-ey is just so much chaff. And what's the result of that? Lots and lots of poets who only want to read post-avant stuff.

"You can't say it that way anymore" is the dictum for the coolest kids and profs at the AWP. Even though I'm sure JA would be the first to say he hardly meant that you couldn't.

This is a serious issue, really. That someone like Silliman, who has proven via his blog to be more or less ignorant of the tradition (don't get me started on his obliviousness to poetry of other languages!), is seen by so many of these younger poets as some sort of sage of poetry is evidence of a certain crisis in the innovative wing of things.

“In the case of Ashbery, he has said numerous times that he doesn't have any formula for how he writes other than using the poem as a launching pad for free associations.”

Translation: I can’t actually master modern craft or construct any good poetry for posterity, have no original ideas and so I just throw words at the wall and publish what sticks. Far be it from me to kill the cash cow!

Fuzz Against Junk said...

“By pointless, do you mean that elliptical poetry resists easy paraphrase? If so, then I agree.”

To me, elliptical poets--or whatever you want to call the poets collected in the Convex Spoon River Anthology--are like "fuzz against junk." What does that mean? The war on drugs--fuzz (police) against junk (drugs)? The band that calls itself Fuzz Against Junk, possibly because it uses fuzz boxes? In a corner of my apartment I have some junk--a milk crate of LPs and old notebooks--befuzzed with carpet fibers, hairs, dustdevils, etc. That's literal fuzz against junk. "Fuzz Against Junk" is ambiguous, so you pick the meaning you like or balance conflicting meanings in your mind. "Elliptical" just means economical of words to the point of ambiguity. A lot of Ashbery's lines are like that. "Morning fed on the/light blue wood/of the mouth": is the sun eating a wooden bust? Maybe, maybe not. Burroughs can be like that too. This is from The Ticket that Exploded: "transitory halting place in this mutilated phantom." So we're pausing momentarily on our walk inside the ghost of someone who was mangled to death? Maybe, maybe not.

I remember watching a David Lynch film in a theater. When the camera was portentously creeping toward a swarm of rolypolies or something, a guy in front of me clutched his companion's arm and whispered in panic, "What does that MEAN? I don't UNDERSTAND!" Burt says elliptical poets want to be dissimilar to television, and in their ambiguity they are. Television tends to spell everything out for viewers like that guy with a low threshold of ambiguity tolerance.

Yeah, that interpretation of the title is more or less correct. It's actually the title of a now out-of-print collage satire of the 1950s war on drugs in the style of Max Ernst's Une Semaine De Bonte.

Kent>

I probably fall into that generation you described, but my interest certainly extends beyond the "post-avant" or whatever. Granted, I do tend to read abundantly from the "other" tradition, I also read a lot of poetry in translation. Generally my interest falls into the latter half of the 19th century onward.

And Silliman? I find it to be the dullest of Langpo. I prefer Armantrout or Hejinian. And while I check his blog, mostly cause it's the biggest poetry blog in the English language, I find I disagree with him more often than not.

Gary>

The problem with your translation is that it doesn't reflect the reality. Ashbery has produced numerous works that use traditional forms. When his work is not in form, it just reflects a different tool in Ashbery's rather large toolbox. Anyway, we've had this conversation before in some other comment stream. Do me a favor. Go find a copy of Some Trees and read "The Painter" and "The Grapevine".

Right, John, there are 13 ways of looking at the fuzzbird, not just one, and to be content with that multiplicity of views--content with half knowledge, as I believe Keats says--is Negative Capability, which is related to the Romantics' attraction to the bizzare, irrational, and nocturnal. Picco pipe with pewter ferrule.

What dimensions of perceptive thoughtmanifest themselves in the dreams of cats:in the dual voice of wind & wettrees whispering, the only soundin a forest shading violetfrom the rainbow settling into

twilight?

In the grunts of tremendous whales,in the flower whose petals fallfrom coarse September gusts,in the sweat of artists closingweary eyes that have watched a brushall night,in the blind multiplication ofinfinite cells,in fleas running in the pubichairs of those who make love,in a mouse squeaking as the hawkpulls its intestines out,in children standing hungry and naked,in owls hiding in cathedral bells,in nuns who watch the sea,in you, as opposed